A sixteenth-century enslaved moor in the new world : the story of estebanico al-Zamori reconstructed in Laila Lalami’s the moor’s account

Abstract EN

The Spanish relacións tell us that estebanico / Mustafa was a slave, that he was a moor from the town of Azemmour on the Atlantic coast of morocco, that he was captured by the Portuguese, Latinized, Christianized and sold in Spain, and then shipped across the Atlantic to the American southwest around1527 as servant and guide, and that he was killed by the Zunis between 1539 and 1540.

although some historians have tried to understand estebanico in new Spain, these attempts are inscribed within the Spanish master accounts.

the latter which are written from the point of view of fray Marcos or the conquistadors miss the constitutive role of the moor, who throughout the conquest provided assistance and mapped the colonial road to the new world’s pueblos and deserts.

estebanico’s story as explorer in Spain's colonial writings is erroneously twisted by the distorting lenses and representational practices of early overseas expansionist aspirations and imperial exigencies.

with the aim of disorienting racial aggression, our study is concerned with the analysis of the story of Laila Lalami’s Estebanico from a counter-stereotypical discourse far from bias.

the research has concluded that by giving voice to this historically marginal explorer and by resurrecting his agency and by raising him to the position of narrator and main protagonist, Spanish enslavement and appropriation, through historical fiction, are vehemently obliterated, offering estebanico ample opportunities to pen down his own account.